Mr. Jake Yamashita, President and CEO of RICOH, paid a visit to RICOH Malaysia’s newly renovated headquarters in Shah Alam today. This marks a number of milestones for the company, including Ricoh’s smart office transformation, which has catapulted the company into a new era of digitalization, as well as Yamashita’s first visit to Malaysia from Japan. To acknowledge this gracious occasion, RICOH Malaysia held an exclusive roundtable discussion for the media to highlight the importance of digitalisation and Environment, Social and Governance in the workplace.
Accompanying Jake on the panel was Joji Takunaga, Managing Director of Ricoh – Asia Pacific + Latin America and Steven Burger, General manager of Ricoh – Asia Pacific + Latin America. The afternoon was addressed by Alice Lee, Managing Director of Ricoh (M) Sdn Bhd.
Many topics were touched during the panel discussion which included Ricoh’s new approach to the ever-changing world which is to assist businesses make a seamless digital transformation towards their goals in achieving genuine ESG.
Jake’s visit to Malaysia is intended to address several issues that RICOH and the majority of companies globally are facing – the need for digital transformation. RICOH Graphic Communications, RICOH Industrial Solutions, and RICOH Futures are all important players in the digitalization of workplaces, because these business sectors frequently engage in advanced technological and conceptual areas.
Jake claims that many people associate Ricoh with copiers or the environment. He stated that he appreciates this because it demonstrates the collaborative efforts of RICOH management and employees over the years. Since 1998, RICOH has advocated environmental management, and its cumulative efforts in a progressive approach to environmental, social, governance (ESG) have been the reason customers and dealers worldwide choose RICOH as their preferred partner. Because of this, RICOH refers to ESG as future finance.
The adoption of digital technologies and their potential to influence ESG priorities are becoming increasingly convergent. Improved data collection, reporting, and analysis will have the biggest impact right away and will benefit every part of the business. Additionally, finance and treasury organisations are adopting next-generation technology, including cloud infrastructure, robotics for shared service centre operations, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and blockchain to digitise supply chains. They are also deploying new data and collaboration tools to achieve important objectives like regulatory compliance, data protection, workforce productivity, and much more.
The secret to effectively using digital technology as an ESG enabler is to ensure that a comprehensive strategy is in place with collaboration across an ecosystem of partners, including businesses, governments, banks, multilateral organisations, and other third-party providers, who can offer solutions and share information in pursuit of important goals.
“When we decided to become a digital services company focused on the world of work, some people wondered if we were abandoning our manufacturing roots. Some businesses have undoubtedly adopted a strategy of outsourcing hardware production and focusing on services. Our approach, on the other hand, is to collaborate with customers. Edge devices are critical to achieving our objectives,” Jake explained.
People generate a wide variety of data at work. It is crucial to extract the required and important data from the massive volumes that are produced. The effectiveness of analysis and artificial intelligence-based work is increased by high-quality data. Jake continued, “It will be challenging to create an ecosystem where data can add value. Even if you build a great platform, without good edge devices, you will only get meaningless information. This is where the RICOH Smart Integration co-creation platform comes into play.
Jake believes that people must be innovative, generate useful ideas, and broaden their perspectives because they are at the centre of all work processes. It is essential to make artificial intelligence, systems and networks, and other digital platforms more approachable, accessible and user-friendly for people because they are analogue beings living in a world that is becoming more and more digital. “I think the Ricoh Group can pull this off”. Although AI and other machines have historically had limited capabilities, Jake suggested that as they have advanced quickly, the possibilities have greatly increased too.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) was implemented by RICOH in 2018. They started re-evaluating the duties that employees should carry out as they overhauled their business processes. Consider the possibility that one business process can be automated by a single robot. Will the other 50 workers be idle if 70 robots and 50 employees can complete the work that 100 people previously handled? Should we be pleased that we can reduce labour costs by half?
“No. We should be delighted to have freed those people up to take on new and creative work. We should invest in educating and reskilling these people accordingly”, affirmed Jake.
“I would be thrilled if customers were to realize that Ricoh is always there for them, willing to assist them with their work needs. Of course, we take pride in the fact that we have always supported our clients, and we intend to keep doing so while harnessing the power of digital technology to address their issues and remain accessible to them, assisting them with digital transformation and their advancement towards their ESG practices. We will make an effort to focus all investments, development of human resources, and management decisions on achieving that objective, and we will keep working to provide top-notch goods and services.
We are boldly taking on new challenges with our eyes fixed on the opportunities that lie ahead precisely because we are all generally going through a difficult time. The Ricoh Group will keep working to achieve Fulfilment through Work so that our stakeholders will continue to hold high expectations for our efforts”, Jake concluded.
About Ricoh
Ricoh is empowering digital workplaces using innovative technologies and services that enable individuals to work smarter from anywhere. With cultivated knowledge and organizational capabilities nurtured over its 85-years history, Ricoh is a leading provider of digital services, information management, and print and imaging solutions designed to support digital transformation and optimize business performance.
Headquartered in Tokyo, Ricoh Group has major operations throughout the world and its products and services now reach customers in approximately 200 countries and regions. In the financial year ended March 2022, Ricoh Group had worldwide sales of 1,758 billion yen (approx. 14.5 billion USD).
For further information, please visit www.ricoh.com
